Pixies' guitarist Joey Santiago has this helpful tip for fans savouring the band's first album in 23 years: Add to your existing playlist of Pixies favourites, hit shuffle, enjoy.

"It belongs in that old catalogue," said the lead guitarist who, with frontman Charles 'Black Francis' Thompson and drummer David Lovering, has kept the Pixies at the cutting edge of American indie music since the 1980s.

"The shuffle thing works for me, and hopefully people are cognisant of that," added Santiago over a dodgy telephone line from London on April 29, the official North American release date for Indie Cindy. Bringing together a dozen tracks from three previously released extended-play records, Indie Cindy is the Pixies' fifth studio album – and the first since Trompe le Monde way back in 1991.

Now and then: Current Pixies' line-up (above, from left) comprises Charles 'Black Francis' Thompson, Joey Santiago and David Lovering. The original line-up (below, from left) Kim Deal, Santiago, Thompson and Lovering in 1992. Fanboys are still lamenting the departure of Kim Deal, who left the band in 2012.

Although they never dominated the charts, the Pixies have nevertheless had an outsized impact since coming together in Boston in 1986, with their raw sound influencing the likes of Nirvana, Weezer and Radiohead. A cover version of their earliest hit, Gigantic, features prominently in an iPhone commercial now running on US television.

Reviews for Indie Cindy have been mixed: Rolling Stone shrugged it off as a sampling of "hit-or-miss songs" while Britain's NME music weekly hailed the "long overdue" album as "free-sounding, adventurous and explosive."

For Santiago, it's "an honest progression" and something of a "snapshot" of where the Pixies now stand, and where they might be going next, now that its members are well into middle age. "We're such a lucky band, that we have, like, a style of our own," he said. "We can basically pick and choose (musical styles) and explore out of that, without even thinking of it."

The cover art for new Pixies album Indie Cindy.

Hardcore fans will lament the absence of founding bassist Kim Deal, who abruptly quit the band in 2012 just as it was starting to record new material in Wales with producer Gil Norton. But Santiago, who kept in touch with all his bandmates when the Pixies took 10 years off before reuniting as a touring entity in 2003, said the remaining Pixies have moved on.

"When the news first got to us in that coffeeshop in Wales (that Deal was leaving), it was a shock to the system," he said. "But after the third day... We went through the mourning process, and it's over. We've got to let the past be the past."

While Simon 'Ding' Archer laid down the bass lines for the Indie Cindy tracks, Santiago said the band is delighted with its current touring bassist, Paz Lenchantin, formerly with A Perfect Circle. "Fortunately, we found somebody who fits right in," he said. "We're enjoying every moment of it, and we're really enjoying this new line-up."

The Pixies should be enjoying life on the road as well. Coming off a US tour that began last September, the group is soon heading to Australia for four gigs at the Sydney Opera House, before spending June and July in Europe – including a Glastonbury festival appearance.

"Sometimes I don't know what country I'm in," said Santiago, reflecting on the touring life with a hearty laugh. "You know what? I relish it, because it's complete freedom, not knowing where you are. Does it really matter, as long as you wake up?" – AFP/RelaxNews

The former members of the music world's biggest boy bands are also set to go on tour together.

Two members of the NKOTBSB tribe spilled the beans on making music that is bound to thrill 1990s kids everywhere.

Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter and New Kids On The Block's Jordan Knight announced they will record an album and go on tour together. The duo revealed the collaboration on Good Morning Americaand appeared on the Wendy Williams show to talk about combining their boy band powers.

"We hit it off a long time ago, actually," Knight said. "We worked in the studio before, we always knew we would be collaborating on music and we reunited when we did the NKOTBSB tour. We always talked about doing a tour together. We thought, I should do a solo album and he would do a solo album and we'd go on tour. But then we came to think as like, 'we should do something together and mixing it up and doing something new'."

The duo are in the recording studio now and expect to be finished with their album on Sept 2. After that, they will be embarking on a US tour starting Sept 15. Perez Hilton released a recording called Just The Two Of Us from their upcoming album tentatively titled Nick & Knight.

The interview on Good Morning America quickly got sloppy when Williams showed a picture of former N'Sync member Joey Fatone and misidentified him as a member of the Backstreet Boys. Williams also asked Knight and Carter to respond to Fatone's claims that they're only doing music together for the money, something that Carter clarified.

"He's got a really dry sense of humour," Carter said of Fatone. "That's who he is. He's a funny guy. So we were great afterwards, we're cool." Knight and Carter also dished about Carter's low key wedding, Jenny McCarthy's introduction to the NKTOB family (she's engaged to Donnie Wahlberg) and the struggles of juggling tour duties and fatherhood. — Reuters

You are subscribed to email updates from MusicTo stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.